Recently, for energy saving and environmental conservation, incorporation of an idling stop function in such a work vehicle as a hydraulic excavator has been demanded. The idling stop function refers to a function to automatically stop an engine when an idling state of a work vehicle has continued for a prescribed time period. The idling state means a state that a work vehicle stands by while an engine remains operating.
In general, since the idling stop function is a function for automatically stopping an engine, the number of times of stop of the engine increases.
In this connection, Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2004-251278 has proposed such a scheme that the number of times of stop of an engine is counted in order to ascertain load imposed on the engine, and based on a result of counting, an idling stop function is inactivated when the number of times of stop of the engine has exceeded the upper limit number of times which serves as a threshold value. Thus, the number of times of stop of the engine with the idling stop function is suppressed and load imposed on the engine can be mitigated.